Advent has always been my favorite time of year. Not only does it lead up to the festival of Christmas, but my birthday falls right around half way through. What’s more, I grew up in snowy Central New York—that’s the barren hinterlands of Upstate, for those in the city so nice they named it twice—and if I didn’t get a White Christmas, the Great Lakes were good for a storm around my birthday so there’d at least be a good beginning to the winter.
Advent is far from an untouched subject around these parts, so I’m clearly not alone.
Your OT Advent Calendar this year will be musical. We’ll talk about diamond-in-the-rough traditional tunes just waiting for renewed popularity, crimes against Christmas, the silly songs and the songs that have become modern traditions. We’ll also talk about the notion of true Christmas Carols, those which address the twelve days festival beginning on Christmas itself, including not just the one day-counting song but another.
Let’s dive in, shall we?
Today’s tune is “The Wexford Carol.”
When I was first contemplating this project, I sent a text to my parents and my sister and asked for songs they would like to see. They had a bunch of great ideas, some of which I’ve used. The one that intrigued me the most was my fathers insistence that I should include “The Wexford Carol” and use the version by Yo Yo Ma and Alison Krauss.
This stuck out to me for three reasons. First of all, I have a deep personal connection to County Wexford in Ireland. Second and Third, there’s Yo Yo Ma and Alison Krauss.
They both speak through their instruments. Ma’s cello is amiable and thoughtful and kind and Krauss sings like a fiddle echoing through old woods and hills.
I don’t know that I’ve ever heard anything more evocative and beautiful. The cello, her voice, the bodhrán and the pipes. It reminded me of one of my favorite G.H. Chesterton quotes:
The great gaels of Ireland
The men that God made mad
For all their wars are merry
And all their songs are sad
Here’s another version. Note that, Krauss’s fiddle voice includes a number of grace notes and incidentals that this version, while beautiful, lacks:
On ukulele? On ukulele:
